Slide Guitar

I love to play slide guitar. Love it. From the great twang and sadness in country style acoustic slide to the thick distortion and menacing movement of rock and roll, I love it all. But it took me a long time to decide on what slide I liked the best. After all, there are a lot of options. Metal, glass, or even stone or ceramic? Dunlop or D'Addario? Thick wall or thin? Days of comparison and research go in to selecting that first slide. And just recently did I find my favorite.

I had been using a Dunlop 215 glass slide until I lost it recently. Having no desire to go out and by a new one, I decide to make my own. So I grabbed an empty bottle and a grind stone drill bit and went to work. scoring around the base of the neck, I then broke the bottle off at the point of the score. It was a bit sharp, so I used the grind stone to dull the edges and the scratch up the surface for a bit of character.

After a bit of practice getting used to the unfamiliar shape and sound, I fell in love. I played that day for hours. I recommend nothing more to the starting slide player than to make your own slide, and here's why; slide guitar sounds incredible when played on crappy things. The best thing you can do to make your slide sound better is to worsen your equipment and a very easy way to do that is to break a bottle and use part of it.

This phenomenon of bad guitars playing great slide is not unobserved. Take a look at Jack White. Jack White's main slide guitar is an electric Kay hollow body arch top made some time in the 1950's. Not even Jack knows when, because he got it from a pawn shop for free when he helped the owner move his fridge as young man (1). This guitar was given to him because it did not look good enough to sell in the pawn shop. Have you ever seen the miserable hunks of wood a pawn shop will try to sell as a guitar? And this one didn't make the cut. The feedback issues on this guitar were so bad that Jack covered the entire front of the body of the guitar, aside from the pickup, in thick construction paper to try to stop it. Now stop reading this and go listen to Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. Go on. I'll wait.

fantastic right? That sixty year old beat up thing is what is being played on that track, with a metal slide. It sounds so good because of the poor quality of the instrument. And that same philosophy can be applied to your slide itself, and I for one believe it should.

How to make a bottle neck slide

1: It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggenheim, Sony Pictures Classics, 2008

Dunlop's "Crybaby Wah" Expression Pedal

Ever since I started playing the electric guitar, I have wanted a wah pedal. After all, the wah pedal has been instrumental in shaping the way rock and roll has sounded since Vox introduced the first version in 1965. Used wonderfully by many players and bands, from The Stooge's 1969 to the second half of the incredible solo on Living Color's Cult of Personality, to The Steve Miller Band's The Joker. Well, I recently got my hands on one, and I love it.

I've been playing it with my Epiphone Les Paul, which, with its mahogany neck and body, as well as dual ceramic humbuckers, has its own very rich, warm tone. I amplify this guitar with the Epiphone "Snake-pit 15" 15 watt open-back amplifier, A perfect match for the guitar in my opinion. One of may favorite thing about this pedal is that unlike many filter and expression pedals, the tone that comes out of the amplifier is a modified version of what went in to the pedal. Many pieces of equipment in this class change the entire tone of the guitar, instead of just bending and modifying it.

When the pedal is not in full swing, it still has a nice sound. In fact, running the pedal completely turned down through a distorted channel gives it a sound reminiscent of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love. Turned all the way up without movement produces a high, almost screaming tone, perfect for punk rock solos. The actual intended modulation sounds wonderful, and played slowly sort of reminds of the sound of water dropping into a pool.

The biggest setback of this pedal is that it makes subtlety rather difficult. IT fits perfectly into big sweeping movements and crazy 80's hard rock solos, but the Crybaby misses the mark on the subtle movement and funky barks its counter parts are well known for, Overall, however, for a rock lover, this pedal is a must-have for a developed kit.

Guitar World Magazine's view on wah pedals: http://www.guitarworld.com/say-wah-five-essential-signature-wah-pedals

The Crybaby Wah in question

Picture source: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/dunlop-original-cry-baby-wah-pedal February 12th, 2016